Shawn Williams was in pharmaceutical sales for nine years before starting his personal blog in 2006. The blog was about South Dallas an area of more than 500000 people. He says he first started the blog to try to combat negative images of the African American community that he saw in the mainstream media. When he was let go from his job right around the time the blog was beginning to grow he decided to take his personal blog one step further creating Dallas South News a full-fledged nonprofit news site in 2009.